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Wasp Practices, Set for Reel PickupThe Boston-based aircraft Carrier Wasp, which left its home port Monday, is the “prime recovery ship” for the upcoming Gemini space flight. If the U.S. scores a bullseye, the capsule carryingastronauts James McDivitt and Edward White will land within one mile of the Wasp, 400 miles southeast of Bermuda. (UPI)__rictsbuthemainstjisla-ABOARD THE USS WASP (UPI) — The carrier Wasp got clown to the exact business of astronaut retrieval Tuesday with the simulated pickup of the Gem-ini-4 space capsule about 400 miles north-northwest of Bermuda.The Wasp, which left its home port of Boston Monday with a complement of about 2,600 aboard, began the three-hour exercise with the dispatch of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from the big carrier deck,A total of six planes took part in the morning exercise. Another in the afternoon included the lowering overboard from the Wasp of a 2,000-pound “boilerplate,” or simulated space capsule.The carrier then steamed away from the dummy capsule which bobbed in the sea waiting for the search planes to home in on it. While “flag plot”—nerve center of the recovery operation located about midway up in the carrier island above the flight desk—kept its electronic eyes and ears open, crewmen carried out other assignments.One of these consisted of unrolling on the deck a huge square of white canvas treated with reflector material and painted with large, black rectangular designs. Astronauts James A. McDivitt and Edward H. White II, conditions permitting, are scheduled to try to obtain a visual sighting of and photograph the canvas tvhen their spacecraft orbits past the carrier some 115 miles high about mid-flight in their four-day trip.A little more than two hours after the exercise began, the carrier, guided by the search planes, sighted the grey boilerplate rolling in the blue swells of the Gulf Stream, a vivid streak of green marker dye trailing behind it.i of : re-ent’s ‘ying i Doily.Two rubber-suited pararescue swimmers with oxygen tanks and masks were in attendance, having affixed the yellow flotation collar around the dummy. It then was hoisted aboard.Live Telecast
Newspaper Details
Pacific Stars and Stripes
Tokyo, Tôkyô, JP
Fri, Jun 04, 1965
Page 21
Full Page
Clipped by
Marc H.
VA, USA 06 Oct 2024
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